Solicitors from Hell
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 1:36PM As reported in The Lawyer and countless other publications it appears the Solicitors from Hell website is no more.
At the time of writing at least the UK domain appeared to have been pulled... presumably because of threat of contempt of Court proceedings if the injunction obtained by the Law Society had not been complied with?
I can't say that I am 100% comfortable with the way this has been dealt with. On the one hand you can't really argue with the comments made by the judge in one of the defamation claims against the site's owner earlier this year that:
"many conscientious and highly reputable firms and individuals have found themselves as objects of offensive abuse and defamatory publication at the behest of disappointed litigants"
On the flip side though, what kind of message does it send for the Law Society to bring legal action to close down a site like this? As some of the comments on the Lawyer article and elsewhere show there is a definite perception of protection of a vested interest.
If the USA can negotiate with the Taliban then would it have been outside the realms of possibility to bring Solicitors from Hell "into the fold" somehow? I can't help feeling that would have been a better result for public perception of the profession.
It's also interesting to note that some enterprising solicitors appear to have bought up "Solicitors from Hell" as a Google adwords search term... presumably with a view to poaching some disatisfied clients from the competition?!
